Tuesday 8 January 2013

I led the Leaders' Devotion again today and then, because it was raining, Morning Drills happened inside the Dining Hall.  Nikki led the Bible Story today, teaching about Deborah.  Anto, Brenda and I helped and we acted out the story after she'd read it through once and she had the children be the soldiers.  I played Deborah and at the time when Deborah leads the soldiers in a song of praise I stepped forward to sing a single line "Praise the Lord" to start off the bit of monologue I had... much to my surprise, they knew the song I used the melody of and the leaders and some of the children carried the song on!  I then took the liberty of leading it again after saying the lines I had to say. :)

I underestimated how long it would take me to set up for my workshop so I ended up explaining the resources as I took them out of the suitcase I'd held them in.  We also almost ran out of time at the end, but managed to get everything out of the way before the other children needed to line up for lunch.

There were less boys than girls overall at the camp and it was the boys' turn for swimming today.  Not only were there less of them, but we divided them up into 3 groups instead of 2 and this meant that the swimming session went much smoother and we had more opportunities to do one-to-one "lessons" with them.  We also didn't get kicked or grabbed quite as much!

The evening session was a "Cultural Show" which really was amazing to watch.  The children had been split into groups according to what part of Uganda they were from (well, it was really what side of Kampala they were from) and they said a little bit about that region then performed a song or dance from it.  Okay, so the long-history of women not being considered equal to men was apparent in several of the dances, but they were still amazing to watch!

The 4 of us and 2 other English girls who had been working in Uganda for a year did a cultural presentation for the UK.  We taught them to say "Alright", told them about our weather, food, sports and flag.  Nikki and Brenda sang a song while Anto and I did a bit of Morris dancing and then we all sang "God Save our Queen" for them.